I Have Heard The Mermaids Singing
by BasementOfTheMansion
Summary: A dozen standalone ficlets about or involving Toby Flenderson. Soundtrack provided by The Cure. Oh, come on, kids... You know you're a little intriged. Containing angst, AU, Costa Rica, a hint of TobyPam, a lot more TobyKelly, and maybe a bit of fluff.
1. Open

_Hello, friends. This is an experiment of mine, in which I wrote a ficlet--not a songfic, but a ficlet--for every song on the Wish album by the lovely and talented Cure. There are lyrics and further notes in my profile if you're interested. Every fic is meant to stand alone and some are AU, just to clarify. Disclaimer: I own a copy of Wish and a nine-year-old boom box on which to play it, but nothing else._

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**I. Open**

God, he was regressing. It was Amsterdam all over again. Costa Rica was supposed to be about new beginnings, not drowning the past and hoping there was no future. He frequented the tourist bars, loud and falsely cheery and desperate, talking to people he formed half-hour relationships with for no other reason than the fact that they spoke English, too. And the best part was that anyone he met left after a week or two and he never ran into them and had to explain why he hadn't done the things he told them he was planning on doing.

He hadn't found a job yet, or a permanent place to live. He'd do that a little later. When he wasn't beating himself up about his last few weeks in the States. When he didn't have a hangover. When the sun and the sand had fixed everything like they were supposed to.


	2. High

**II. High**

All he needed was someone to tell him not to go. Because he didn't want to leave, not really. He'd just been backed into a corner by his own stupidity, and he was getting desperate.

Kelly called him that fateful night, the night in which he mildly sprained his ankle jumping a fence and running into the dark, and more or less asked what the hell that was all about. Really, that was all he--Toby Flenderson the dumping ground for everyone else's problems--needed. Someone to listen. And in a roll-reversal, Kelly listened supportively while he poured his problems out until one in the morning.

Then she said it. "Costa Rica isn't going to fix anything."

They had the next day off, and she came over to make sure he didn't do anything else crazy. He called into Corporate and got his vacation days approved. It was only two weeks, but it was enough time to think things over and start going to therapy again. When he returned to work, he formally apologized to Pam and suffered though a period of shunning from all his coworkers.

Except for Kelly. Once he let her into his life, she quickly and easily became a fixture. His only ally 9 to 5. his one-girl support group.

After awhile she broke up with Darryl, more or less by default,, and started dating Toby, also by default. It surprised him how naturally it happened, the serendipity of it, and how happy she made him.

The only thing that bothered him was how close he'd come to letting it go.


	3. Apart

**III. Apart**

"Is something wrong, Kelly?" Toby asked.

She glared at him.

"I mean... You look tired."

"...I was up late last night. Calling Ryan." she mumbled.

"Kelly," he said gently. "It's not going to happen."

She didn't meet his eyes.


	4. From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea

**IV. From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea**

Her name was Esperanza.

She was no great beauty, and close to his age, but she had a warm heart and Toby stumbled into a relationship with her. They met at the beach, water and sun thick in the air and the world hot and feverish like a dream.

She wanted him, and he wanted so much to want her. Just being wanted was amazing and made him feel alive again. So they spent their days like the most obvious love stories, the weeks unfolding like paragraphs in a storybook. It was paradise... Love and ocean.

But the feelings he held for her withered in the heat and he grew distant from her. All the best parts of himself had been poured out in the distant mountains. She watched him helplessly, and he stayed inside more and made excuses. She gave it one last-ditch effort, offering herself and an ultimatum. It wasn't terribly surprising to watch him turn away.

To the north he turned, and to home.


	5. Wendy Time

**V. Wendy Time**

Toby's coworkers believe Michael Scott about his divorce. If you asked them, they'd deny it, but the truth is that none of them knows the truth, because none of them ever asked.

Who watches the watchmen? Who listens to the confidant?

They assume she left him. It's easy to think that. He's so morose and quiet. He had to be the needy one, the jilted lover left holding the bill.

Hah. If only they knew.

Sometimes he can still feel her hooks in him, the fire and codependency he almost mistook for love. He'd rather spend a million nights in his car than a single one in her arms, and he shudders, thinking he's the luckiest man in the world right now, just to be free of her.

She got Sasha, though, because she's good at looking stable if you don't know her and juries usually favor the mother. He doesn't know whether she's doing it to spite him or not.

She looked so stable when she met him, and she was going to fix his shyness and sadness.

He thinks that she did, the day he went out and got the divorce papers.


	6. Doing The Unstuck

**VI. Doing the Unstuck**

It's the happiest he's ever been going to work. There's even a party for him. First he's ever gotten.

Afterwards, he gets Hank to let him back into the building and he grabs two boxes of complaint files--one of Michael's and one of Dwight's, and both only a fraction of the total--and carries them out back by the Dumpsters. He has a lot of matches and a bag of marshmallows and he's waited a long time for this.

Kelly finds him halfway through Dwight's whining about Jell-o and phony calls. She's the only one who hugged him like she's actually going to miss him, and that's about the most poignant thing he's felt all day.

He offers her a marshmallow. She eats it slowly, staring into the flames like she's mesmerized. She's quiet for the first time in forever.

When there's nothing left to burn, she hugs him again. "I'm really gonna miss you," she mumbles into his shirt, and looks up at him.

Then she's kissing him, a chaste friend kiss for about a second, then hard and unexpected, and she doesn't stop. It tastes like marshmallows and the air around them is acrid and ashy from burnt paper, and it kind of goes on too long. Not that he minds.

"Don't tell Darryl," she says when they finally pull apart, and she's grinning this weird, shy grin.

"Not much chance of that," he says, a little dazed. "All things considered."


	7. Friday I'm In Love

**VII. Friday I'm In Love**

It's kind of really amazing that Kelly doesn't tell the whole office when she starts dating Toby. But it's been a few years since her first office romance and she's learned a thing or two. Play it, cool but avoid crazy too-obvious CIA covert operations.

So they play Dunderball and talk here and there around the cubicle wall. After work's over, they meet for real.

She's so beautiful when she's dressed up and even more so when she's not. And Toby's surprised, in an unexpectedly pleasant way, when he discovers that eating macaroni and cheese while watching _Best Week Ever_ to Kelly's excited commentary is the high point of his week.


	8. Trust

**VIII. Trust**

He was too distant with her, afraid he'd break the only decent thing he'd had in his life in years and years like he'd broken everything else. And that was what threatened to shatter it anyway.

"You don't want me," she accused, tears in her eyes, arrows in his heart. "You don't want me and you think I'm a stupid kid and you're just going to leave me behind like you left your old desk behind--"

Toby took Kelly's hands in his. "That's not true. None of it.'

"Then what is it?"

"...I'm just afraid I'm going to lose you."

She laughed helplessly; it sounded like a sob. "You idiot. I'm not going anywhere."

He gathered her in his arms. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "This isn't easy for me. I... I'm trying."

"I know."


	9. A Letter To Elise

**IX. A Letter to Elise**

He had to leave. It wasn't that he'd made an idiot and/or pervert of himself, or at least it wasn't just that. He couldn't suffer through anymore of this with the goddamn perfect receptionist. Pretending to smile. Pretending his heart wasn't breaking and he wasn't going crazy. Even when she was nice and civil to him, he felt the ache, the taunting truth of it all.

He wasn't the one who made her eyes light up and he never would be even if Jim Halpert dropped off the face of the planet tomorrow. He knew that, and the shreds of hope he was clinging to were thin and brittle as month-old dental floss.

Now he was throwing away his entire life just to get away from her. But it wasn't really her at this point. It was the entire pipe dream she represented, and he couldn't take another day of walking by her desk every morning and feeling like he was drowning.

So he was leaving, and they could both rewrite their memories so that they were just slightly awkward friends and he had real reasons to go to Costa Rica.


	10. Cut

**X. Cut**

Sunday nights were the worst, because Sasha's mother would come for her a little earlier than she strictly needed to, and they'd eye each other while Sasha gathered up her possessions.

For the longest time, Toby kept the hope that he'd see some glimmer of the woman he'd married in her. A hint of sympathy, or apology. But the eyes that softened and sparkled when looking their daughter were as glass when they turned to him, giving him nothing.

Eventually, that hope curled and died with everything else.


	11. To Wish Impossible Things

**XI. To Wish Impossible Things**

He'd been a fool to expect things would work out with Kelly.

They were too different. He didn't understand her, nor she him. They'd started fighting bitterly a lot; she'd rant at him about everything under the sun until she was out of breath, then he'd say one thing, in a voice not much louder than the one he normally used, that would cut her to the bone and she'd start crying.

After a while, they'd given up on the pretense and split, and a chilliness lingered in the annex like some malignant mist out of a Stephan King novel.

Toby sat next to her, divided by so much more than a cubicle wall, and listened to her take customer service calls. He wondered what had come over him, to think she might have actually loved him.


	12. End

**XII. End**

Kelly was a little shocked to get the voicemail from Ryan. It was blunt and simple: "Stop it, Kelly. I don't love you."

She didn't dare delete it, but sobbed under his desk and ignored the ringing telephone. Eventually, Toby showed up. She braced herself for the HR fake-comfort thing.

"I can vouch for you if you wanna take the rest of the day off," he whispered conspiringly. "I'll make something up."

She nodded and wiped her eyes, and the feeling like she's been punched in the stomach started to lessen.


End file.
